Here’s what’s happening Friday in Election 2020 and President-elect Joe Biden’s transition.
TODAY’S TOP STORIES:
OBAMA REDUX: President-elect Joe Biden is getting a lot of the old gang back together. Now well into the process of selecting Cabinet nominees and senior appointees, the incoming Biden administration has a distinctly Obama-esque feel. The familiar names brought back include Denis McDonough, Susan Rice, Tom Vilsack, John Kerry and Antony Blinken.
GOP BANDS TOGETHER: Republicans have found a new way to express their loyalty to President Donald Trump. The Texas lawsuit asking the U.S. Supreme Court to invalidate Biden’s victory has quickly become a conservative litmus test. Many Republicans are signing onto the case even as some have predicted it will fail. The last-gasp bid to subvert the results of the election is the latest demonstration of Trump’s enduring political power even as his term is set to end.
HUNTER BIDEN: The revelation that federal prosecutors have launched a tax investigation into Biden’s son Hunter is now looming over the transition. It’s reviving distracting storylines and complicating the choice of an attorney general, who would have to oversee a probe into Biden’s son. Privately, Trump is demanding to know why the investigation was not revealed ahead of Election Day.
REPUBLICAN RIFT: Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey spent much of Trump’s presidency trying not to provoke confrontation with the president or his fervent defenders. He almost made it through. State law required Ducey to certify Arizona’s presidential election results and sign off on Trump’s defeat. The episode has spiraled into a public and politically damaging dispute between Ducey and influential Trump loyalists in his own party. The rift may be a preview the lasting political impact of Trump’s campaign against democracy.
TIME HONOR: Time magazine has selected Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris as its “Person of the Year.” Time’s editor-in-chief says the duo won the honor for “changing the American story, for showing that the forces of empathy are greater than the furies of division, for sharing a vision of healing in a grieving world.” Other candidates included Trump; frontline health care workers and Dr. Anthony Fauci; and the movement for racial justice.
QUOTABLE: “Short term, we know that when the president sours on anyone … there’s a group of Republicans out there that, wherever the president goes, they will go. The question is going to be whether or not those folks stick to that.” — Mike Noble, a Phoenix pollster and former GOP political consultant.
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